There may be some confusion on how to do your requirements to earn the Bear Rank.  Here is an explanation to help you avoid mistakes and doing steps you do not need.

First, remember this is not like the Wolf Achievements.  You do not have to do all 24 requirements.  This year you have a choice on what you would like to do.  Pick only 12 of the requirements to complete out of the 24. 

Second, it would be too easy to just pick your favorite 12.  There are also four sections: God, Country, Family, and Self.  You have to spread the 12 you choose among these four sections.  The guidance for this choice is that you must do at one requirement for God, three requirements for Country, four requirements for Family, and four requirements for Self.  (1+3+4+4=12)

Bottom Line:  You must complete the requirements for the four sections and equal 12 requirements.  If you do 22 requirements, but have not done your one God requirement you do not advance to Bear.  Even if another scout only did 12 requirements, but spaced them out over the four sections.

To the left is Patrick's progress chart.  These can be found for each scout on their individual pages so that they can track their progress.  On the top you see a chart with 24 sections and various colors.  The 24 sections are for the 24 requirements.  The colors represent the four sections.  God - Green, Country - Yellow, Family - Purple, and Red - Self.  As you complete your requirements I color coordinate the section.  If you already have four red squares complete, you need to work on other sections; no more red requirements will count.  This apllies to all the sections (I only used red as an example).

If you are now completely confused, I am available anytime to answer your questions.

Bear Electives:

Just like in the Wolf year, every ten electives will earn one Arrow Point (AP).  The first AP will be gold and all additional APs will be silver.  APs will not be awarded until the Bear Badge has been awarded.

On Page 180 of the Bear Book, you can see what you need to do to earn credit for electives.  However, unused Bear Trail Achievements can also be used.  There is a catch though.  Any requirement completed under a Bear Trail requirement that was used for the Bear Badge cannot be used as elective credit.  For example: To get credit for the Bear Badge, Achievement 9 has tasks A-G.  For Bear credit you only need to complete any four of them.  So if you use A - D for your Bear Badge, you cannot used E-G as electives.  However, if you use Achievement 8,9,10, and 11 for Bear and you also complete A - G in achievement 13, you get seven elective credits for the work you complete under achievement 13.

Bottom line:  All electives listed on page 180 and after count towards APs.  All extra Bear Achievements completed also count as an elective, unless you are using that achievement for the Bear Badge. 

Basically since we cannot receive any APs until after the Bear Badge is awarded, I will not give any scout credit for electives done through the Bear Trail until I see which requirements are to be used.  However, I will give credit now to all electives accomplished through the Arrow Point Trail.